The Time I Ran Down the Quinta at 6:50 AM

Puh puh puh. {break}Puh puh puh. {break} Puh puh puh. {break}

Puh puh puh. {break}Puh puh puh. {break} Puh puh puh. {break}

"Well, what do you want to do?", Kelsi asked me.

"I guess we have no choice", I responded.

And we didn't really. The sound of an engine trying unsuccessfully to catch and turn over still ringing in our ears, we exited to cab to a flurry of honking, yelling and the general chaos that is morning rush hour traffic on Cali's busiest north-south throughfare, the Quinta. The taxi cab that Kelsi, my friend Katie (who was visiting from Wisconsin) and I had gotten into 20 minutes earlier to take us to school was sitting there, holding up traffic amidst a slew of unhappy cars behind it.

We started to walk. There would be no cabs to be found until we walked at least four more blocks to the south, for no cab would be sitting in this traffic if it did not already have passengers. Looking at our watches our walk turned into more of a run. Backpack on my back, coffee cup in one hand, lunch bag in the other and there I am running down the Quinta at 6:50 AM on a Tuesday. At the end of those four blocks we came to a cross street which I foolishly thought held empty-cab potential. It didn't. No cabs to be found and it's starting to look like we should just stand on the side of the street until we beg our way onto a passing school bus in about 15 minutes time. Great. Cannot wait for the stories of "The time my bus picked up Ms. R and her friends on the side of the road on the way to school."

Welcome to Cali, Colombia, Katie. I promise getting to school is not always this much of a struggle.

I looked over to Kelsi with a look of what now? Then I saw it. Rushing past on the Quinta was an unmistakable beige Renault car with our coworker and friend Daniel at the wheel.

"Daniel!" "Daniel!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" "Where is my phone?!?!?!?!?!?"

Running down the sidewalk in the direction of his car and he picks up his phone after three rings.

"STOP. STOP. STOP. We're {deep breath due to all the running} on the Quinta. We saw you. We need a ride."

I could tell he was immediately confused about why I was calling him at close to 7:00 AM screaming about needing a ride and panting out of breath, but thank goodness he understood he needed to stop. Stop he did and we ran the next block laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation. Five minutes later we were back in a moving vehicle on the way to school. Taking off the sweatshirts we foolishly put on that morning to keep out the morning chill in the air. Laughing at how ridiculous I must have sounded screaming into my phone for Daniel to stop for us. Discussing the fact that we have never once in 1.5 years of taking a cab to school in the morning had this happen. And then it happens on the one day Katie comes to school with me.

But hey, we still made it to school by 7:15 AM, with 15 minutes to spare until the start of the first class. I would call that a win. And an excellent story (blog post?).  

Futbol on the Brain

After watching the Copa del Rey during the "brewery tour" in Medellin, it seems as though soccer is everywhere in Colombia. I mean, more that it usually is given how much Colombians love them some soccer.

Yesterday, my students came into class for the last period of the day begging me to let us watch some of the semi-finals game for the soccer league in Spain, between Real Madrid and Barcelona. I said if we got through the lesson and they wanted to choose to do the homework at home rather than during work time, then maybe we could watch it. Sure enough, by 2:15 we were done with the lesson and so I said we could watch it. Within two minutes two of the boys in my class had the feed from the internet and we were watching the game live.

Now...when I say we were watching the game live, I mean my desktop computer screen was turned around to face the class and about 17 of the 20 students were crowded around the floor below. The coolest thing about watching soccer with students is seeing how into they are! And the girls just as much as the boys, which is cool since I am a pretty sports loving girl myself. :) They spent the next 15 minutes acting like soccer players watching other soccer players, so basically being overly dramatic about everything that happened on the field. Absolutely hysterical to observe.

I wish I had a picture of them all crowded around, but alas you will have to picture 17 eighth graders crowded together.

CHIVA (Or the time we went on a party bus through Cali)

This Friday we celebrated my friend Beatriz's birthday in true Colombian party style, with a chiva! A chiva is a bus without a roof and sides that only extend about 4 feet up. Seats ring around the perimeter of the chiva bus, leaving the middle open as a dance floor. The idea is that the bus drives around the city, playing music, while you hang out with all of your friends throughout the city. I have seen hundreds of chivas since arriving in Colombia, but this was my first time participating!

We left from our neighborhood around 10 pm, water bottles of drinks in hand, and drove around the city for about two hours before ending the night at a bar. Despite the typically maniac drivers in Cali, the chiva drove super slow, which was nice because you could really see things as we drove past. Basically we just danced on the bus to a ridiculous combination of reggaeton, salsa and Beatriz's homemade "Miami 1999" CD while intermittently being interrupted by the on-board DJ and the microphone he should not have been allowed to use.

In summary - we totally loved the chiva and the subsequent dancing at a bar afterwards! Definitely a good birthday celebration :)

Tara, Beatriz and Kelsi outside the chiva.

Kelsi and I on board!

Let the dancing begin!

Aversion to Animals

For anyone who has spent significant time with me, it will come as no surprise that I have an aversion to animals.  I never had a pet growing up, and hardly anyone in my extended family did, so I just did not spend a lot of time around animals.  Many of my friends have/had dogs and those I more or less got used to over the years.  However, some animals I just cannot understand.

For example, let's start with cats.  They're creepy. Stealth.  Sneaky.  They pounce.  Appear out of nowhere.  They slink. It's way too much to handle.  To summarize: Cats are the worst.

Friday night Maggie and I took a stroll to our local movie store to buy a few new movies for the upcoming days/weeks.  We have been to the video store a few times before and everytime we have a little trouble finding it, but I always know we have arrived when we see the cats.  Yes, cats, and that's plural.  The guy who owns it has AT LEAST 4 cats, all of which stroll throughout the store (cause it's located in the basement part of his house/kind of garage)...sketchy I know.  Anyway so we are perusing the videos and the whole time his cats are roaming around.  At one point Maggie had to make one go away and the guy had to physically move one away from me because I was so visibly flustered.  The whole time they were just bouncing up on chairs OUT OF NOWHERE and then slinking around...clearly up to no good.  I was terrified for the duration of the trip.  Please view pictures as evidence of these nightmare animals.  As we paid for the movies, the owner made some remark to me in Spanish that I shouldn't look so nervous with my money.  I was too flustered to be able to explain to him that I wasn't creeped out about having to take out my wallet, rather I thought one of his cats was going to pounce and kill me!

Example number two: bugs.  Gross, but unavoidable in a country where asking for screens on your windows is basically a foreign language.  I just went out to the kitchen to get some water before bed and there it is.  This disgustingly large bug thing.  We proceeded to have about a ten minute confrontation, which I clearly won because my brain is about 6,000 times the size of this foolish thing's.  However, once captured I didn't really know what to do with it or how to transport outside...and Maggie is already asleep :/  So it's sitting in our kitchen under a Juan Valdez cup with Clorox on top to ensure no escape.  Hopefully I wake up before her in the morning...or perhaps she will deal with it by the time I wake up.  Follow up story tomorrow?  I think so.